Urbano lives in the Matsés village of Buenas Lomas Antigua with his wife and two children. Urbano is fiercely independent and lives a very traditional life. He is highly skilled in hunting, fishing, climbing and orienteering himself in the dense jungle. Even among Matsés he is exceptional.
Most of Urbano’s time is spent hunting or on gathering trips in the remote jungle near his home. He prefers to hunt with bow and arrow as shotgun shells are expensive and the noise scares animals away from an area for days. Urbano also uses his bow to shoot fish that feed near the surface of the river. How he sees and hits fish in the dark river water while standing in a tiny, unstable dugout canoe remains a mystery to outsiders.
Norton, Urbano’s son, waits and watches patiently as his father attempts to extract resin.
He also deploys deadfall traps and snares to catch smaller animals and birds but most remarkably he actually climbs up into the forest canopy to catch sloths and other slow moving arboreal animals by hand. His climbing ability, using quickly constructed climbing rings, also allows him to collect Kopal resin and many wild fruits, especially Ungurahui. The Kopal resin is applied to bundles of twigs to make torches that emit a warm, bright light; are long burning and have a pleasant smell that also keeps bugs away.
Due to his constant foraging in the jungle, Urbano is very successful in locating copaiba trees for tapping and is a big part of Acaté’s non-timber forest products program. He often takes his family to remote camps away from the river where they enjoy working together hunting and gathering. Urbano is very proud that his son, Norton, is already showing great promise as a future master of the jungle.
Like bee hunters who mark trees containing a bee hive, Urbano marks the copaiba tree as his using “UR”
Urbano makes a scaffold to reach higher up the trunk for extracting copaiba resin.
Urbano successfully taps a copaiba tree for its medicinal resin as part of Acaté’s Renewable Resins program that brings much needed and sustainable economic opportunities to the communities.
Acaté Amazon Conservation is a non-profit conservation organization based in the United States and Perú that is an extraordinary partnership of the Matsés indigenous people and dedicated conservationists with decades of experience. The Matsés indigenous people live along the tributaries of the upper Javari River, in the heart of the Amazon Basin of what is now the present day border between northeastern Peru and Brazil.
The Matsés are famed as fierce warriors due to their defeat of the rubber tappers who invaded their territory early in the 20th century and their long conflict against frontier colonizers backed by the Peruvian military. Peaceful contact with the outside world began in 1969 when they accepted a meeting with missionaries. Today, the Matsés still live by hunting, fishing and farming but in family homes in permanent villages instead of in communal longhouses in temporary villages.
The Matsés safeguard a vast and biodiverse corridor of intact primary rainforest as well as shield some of the last remaining uncontacted tribal groups in isolation from unwanted encroachment from the outside world.
All of Acaté’s projects are developed in a close partnership with, led, and implemented by the Matsés indigenous people. We operate through implementing strategic programs and real-on-the-ground initiatives that help them protect their chosen way of life, traditions, their ancestral lands and ecology. The on-the-ground conservation initiatives are capacity-building and designed to support their self-sufficiency and independence. Acaté operates with unparalleled integrity and transparency in its operations, partnerships, and reporting.
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Please consider donating today to support our work. The Matsés and other indigenous peoples in the Amazon struggle with the most limited external resources to protect the future of their people, culture, and their rainforests. Each donation will be applied where it will have the highest impact and with full transparency and accountability. Acaté does not exist for the sake of sitting on the sidelines. We are here to make a true impact and we welcome your support!
